Prato 2019: Working with Violence in Adults and Youth – Call for Abstracts Now Open

The Centre for Forensic Behavioural Science at Swinburne University of Technology & Forensicare invites you to submit abstracts for the upcoming conference – Prato 2019: Working with violence in adults and youth.

Violence is a serious and pervasive problem in both young people and adults. A concerning level of crime and disorder and the criminalisation of youth has broad social, legal, economic and health consequences. Crime and violence are often rooted in broader urban and social problems. Media and community responses call for more, and more authoritarian, sanctions. Australian prison populations have grown by almost 40% over five years, with higher rates of growth for female offenders. Such growth is unsustainable and unnecessary as intervention can lead to desistance from crime. Efforts to prevent violence and to understand and treat violent offenders come up against ‘get tough on crime’ approaches, which are often disaggregated and fail to address the ‘real world’ problems. A broad range of professionals are involved in such efforts but confront difficulties in achieving cooperation, with whole of government commitment.

This international conference brings together policy contributors, lawyers, clinicians, legal decision makers, advocates, and researchers to explore the phenomenon of violence from a cross-disciplinary perspective, focusing on clinical, welfare, and legal strategies to explore effective responses to addressing, intervening and preventing violent behaviour. The conference will be held at Palazzo Vaj, the Monash University Centre in Prato, Tuscany, which provides an exciting opportunity to meet in an inviting setting to share research, practice and policy developments that enable a critical examination of novel approaches to understanding and managing violence across the lifespan. This exciting conference is hosted by Professor James Ogloff AM (Swinburne University of Technology, Australia) and Professor Rosemary Sheehan AM (Monash University

The conference will give particular attention to the following themes:

Understanding violence and offending

Exploring youth violence and anti-social behaviour

Family violence and child welfare

Gender and cultural effects

Legal reforms for managing violent offending

Advances in offending programs and approaches to desistance from violence